nato said to take command of the no fly zone over libya with a u.s. led coalition continuing with air strikes on tripoli for six nights this comes as a fierce fighting between pro-government and rebel forces intensifies in misrata with gadhafi as a tank the seizing of a city hospital. clashes in brussels over austerity measures and military spending on libya as you leaders meet for a debt summit. three more workers are exposed to dangerous levels of radiation at the stricken fukushima nuclear plant in japan. and next up we head to our

washington studios for another edition of the alyona show and look at the new rules the obama administration has for arresting and detaining terror suspects. for the see we've got. the biggest issues get the invoice face to face with the news makers. but can they learn to show us the real headlines with none of the mersey are going to live in washington d.c. now there's still confusion in the libya conflict as nobody seems to want to step forward and take command of this mission so what's really going on here almost a debate on the issue then did you know people bomb administration made new rules all miranda rights for terrorism suspects they did it in secret but now those documents have come out so we'll look into yet another obama flip flop and do you

want to be president well then don't forget to visit israel we'll tell you why this country might be just as important for presidential candidates as say iowa or even new hampshire and speaking of presidential candidates where are they it's only a little over a year away from elections and needless to say the g.o.p. has yet to produce any clear front runner so we'll go over the politicians who have officially entered the race and will say which ones we wish would stay far far away all this and much more is a night show but first let's move on to our top story. last week the u.n. security council adopted resolution one nine hundred seventy three which is stablished a no fly zone over libya and authorized all necessary measures to protect civilians from cut off and his forces but seven days later it seems less and less clear what the goals of this mission really are artie's very important i reports. operation odyssey dawn struck with weak minds. france and britain campaigned for

the military offensive into libya but it was america that led the way. firing hundreds of tomahawk missiles against moammar gadhafi stay. compounds and libyan air defenses nearly one week after waging war no country has been able to clarify a clear goal or exit strategy for libya it is u.s. policy that often needs to go not so insists coalition partner britain. gold which will. give you a great solution sold as a humanitarian intervention to protect libyan civilians from could duffy's firepower allied airstrikes are now being blamed for mounting casualties yet we have no choices only victory on this we have no other reason to live there boom us to rise our children we will not give up on going to the shooting the killing helpless people simply americans. we hope there is also little sign of anti-god he

forces gaining much traction with only a few government forces switching sides as for the twenty two arab countries that push for the no fly zone their military is nowhere to be found only cutter put up a handful of warplanes per hit from flying too close to libya meanwhile obama says the u.s. will hand over control of the mission but to whom nato countries are mired in disagreement from the brits and french to the turks have already said that all they want is a no fly zone nothing more than a man and a germans are now stating that they are removing their navy from nato control so it seems like this is quite a model with the cost of this odyssey at a reported one hundred million dollars per day u.s. lawmakers want some answers we would a bad as what is the intelligence that we have would secretary gates leaves us to believe that he doesn't know the play and be we would have pursued that just last

month u.s. defense secretary robert gates publicly opposed american military intervention in libya. but third u.s. war he's now forced to defend the command and control business is complicated. and we haven't done something like this kind of on the slide before. and so it's not surprising to me that it would take a few days to get it all sorted also hard to sort out is us senator john mccain's position on libya the republican repeatedly called for gadhafi is removal he is the blood of americans whose hands because he was responsible for the bombing of pan am one of three yet just eighteen months ago mccain was in tripoli peddling american military equipment and shaking hands with the libyan leader and his son to do everything we. were rationed and turn our country. right now

the rift couldn't be further apart as khadafi thouse to fight fire with fire. in the short term we will be in the long term we will be nearly one week after spearheading a military intervention into another arab country the u.s. u.k. and france are coming under increasing pressure to explain the endgame of this scenario what is happening in libya who is in charge what does victory mean and when will this new and third u.s. that mission finally be accomplished enough or not artsy new york. there's no denying now that this humanitarian intervention is being escalated by the day and it is a war on sunday the u.s. led coalition flew sixty sorties over libya on monday nearly eighty on wednesday one hundred and seventy five i have still no one wants to be in command no one can agree on

a goal so somebody please tell me what's going on you and me to discuss it is jake to appear so co-founder of veterans for rethinking afghanistan dr robert barley assistant professor at the. university of kentucky and blogger at lawyers guns and money and i thank you both for joining me tonight and taking to start with you real quick i mean chris call this a war already have you noticed that the obama administration not in their language to congress not in their language the public they keep calling this a limited humanitarian intervention but guess what bombs are flying people are dying it's a war why can't they say it well they don't have the political strength to the definition of war is when you drop bombs that is and it is war if people are dying that's a war the reason that obama doesn't want to call it a war is because obama doesn't have control not one of the pentagon it also doesn't have control of is is is part of his parliament if you will the congress he also doesn't have it of his cabinet the one the reason that we got in this war was the secretary clinton susan rice strong armed him pushed him compelled him to be a part of this war he looked and said i don't think he's actually

a weakling secretary gates on his national security security adviser told him specifically do not get involved with this we do not have the military sort of apparatus of the north because we're too far stretch to get involved but he looked at the polling numbers and he looked at whether it is lawyers and said it was legal and as a result he got involved because he was stronger by his cabinet that's why we got in this war this humanitarian intervention by the way it's not somalia or sudan or any of the something there's about eight thousand libyans have been killed as a result of this war it was a minor a very minor small interaction did not need the united states intervention now robert obviously obama keeps saying that he wants to hand this op at the same time nato can't agree on anyone who's going to take command so i'm just curious even if we wanted to get out of out at this point could we even do it if nobody else wants to take control. i think it's a really good question and the problem is that we're not that interested in being part of this war right now and i think. it's mostly correct in saying that for

example the sectarian transfer do not want to be involved in this conflict. but no one else really has the capability to do the kinds of stuff that needs to be done to me and wore out and i also create this is a war that's not intervention we don't want a war. and so it can be very hard for us to pass over control to the french we're going to burnish because this war need certain things to happen in order to move forward and only the united states can meet those things and i'm well let's talk about what those things would even mean and you know there are reports that four thousand marines have now left off the coast of virginia and are making their way towards the mediterranean and they haven't really said anything they just said there is back up or operation on what is i mean and he also gives away you know those four thousand marines are standing up at the ready reserve means that they can be doing grid squares are going to be on a boat actually just going around in circles in the med waiting for the call to get up with that i would i would call to go go boots on the ground the reason is because i mean if you look at every single intervention by a foreign country going back to eight hundred sixteen within ten years of the

intervention there is a high likelihood triple the time of a civil war likelihood and with our intervention is more than likely there's going to be a civil war some degree and it already exists there and there's going to be a need for inter international relief the united states will be the first one called by the international community to go in the reason why as a gentleman said you were right that the french and the british and everyone else is going to argue within europe well who's going to take the lead who's going to take the lead and because we haven't challenged them to take over their own security needs for the last hundred years they are going to rely on us and we will get bogged down in another war but do you think that nobody also wants to take the lead because of the example of looking at america that is fighting to current wars in muslim countries that it can't. i mean i think it's fair to say we're a cautionary tale right now and i think that's true for how the french are talking and i also think it's true the obama administration is determined. the marines that are there are the marines on the ground troops in the areas that could be utilized in an emergency. always those are there for

a genuine emergency and you would want them there if something had to happen but that doesn't necessarily mean that the administration isn't committed to keeping troops on the ground no i think the take suggested this is already a civil war where you have basically already intervened in a civil war and it's unclear what france and the united kingdom are prepared to do in order to bring this civil war to a conclusion i think when and when one thing add on if you look at the history of warfare united states one element of battle within our history leads us to the next so so for instance we won it we essentially won a counterinsurgency war in iraq we're taking that same battle implement that into afghanistan which is fixing a civil war in and what we see libya is a civil war and it is prime real estate for the coin interventionists the guys over at center for new american security and elsewhere to jump involve also why is it prime real estate for this why is it even in our interest to put ourselves

intervene in the middle of a civil war i mean quite a bit a better idea to actually help by arming the rebels rather than intervening and killing ourselves. but i just i would have to disagree with a bit with jake right now because i don't think there's any indication at this point that the people who are strong is that because the coin within the government of this is not against a message within the pentagon but really all that interested in invading libya and being part of ground operations in libya i think that the navy was interested in being part of this i think that the air force was interested in being part of this but they are typically not associated with the counterinsurgency faction within the army in fact they're sort of at all odds with it and so i think it would be better to say that there is factional conflict in the military just as benefaction contra . in the cabinet in the united states right now it's true i think one of the one of the reasons i feel generally convinced that coin is likely and u.s. ground troops is likely is because over in burma libya there's a strong al qaeda cell the libyan islamic fighting front and we know from documents

found in iraq that a large part of the insurgency in iraq came to libya there's a strong al qaeda cell we're already seeing the united states being involved in pakistan yemen other areas where cells are growing i mean this is this is exactly where counterterrorist and counterinsurgency guys will want to go but their allies of course the contradiction in our approach here is that we're calling this a humanitarian intervention but really we do have interests of our own and you know those interests might be for now helping the rebels and then later going against the rebels because there are going to be factions within them who we feel are dangerous to ourselves john we're taking a short break and we're going to watch and report here as we talk about the current war in libya let's take a little trip down memory lane twelve years ago today nato started bombing former yugoslavia and both conflicts were billed as humanitarian missions against a country which poses no direct military threat to the u.s. or its allies so what is it about this time of year which makes the west want to go to war r.t.s. and if they see a choke in the reports. in march seasons change sunshine invites americans

onto the streets american politicians invite themselves to foreign countries. and watch nine hundred ninety nine the u.s. and its nato allies bomb yugoslavia armed forces joined our nato allies and air strikes against serbian forces responsible for the brutality in kosovo march two thousand and eleven america's next democratic president and a new coalition of the willing attack libya the u.n. security council passed a strong resolution that demands and to the violence against. it authorized the use of force it was sanctioned by the one security council in contrast to the bombings of the slavia there was no such green light of nine hundred ninety nine in the bomb it's one led by mido the first time the military alliance atop a sovereign nation and non nato member posing no threat to the group similarly libya poses no external threat and there are other striking parallels between the

conduct of these wars the enemy then slaughtered on the loss of each job the new hitler the enemy of today the eccentric monarch and power for over forty years has not just got out he's does join guy yanno dressed three show he modernised leave for a while now similarly villainize to buy the us. these just step down from power and leave the goal now and back then getting rid of a leader no longer favored by the west taking sides with a questionable opposition and what started as a civil war what we're seeing is a four fledged war including attempting to kill the head of state of the targeted country and other leaders of the government that again was you know a page from the yugoslav book of twelve years ago. what is the world learned only not much the official reason for western involvement and so-called humanitarian

mission a term coined in the bombings of one nine hundred ninety nine you know it's who you say they could be if it's going to save it's people. the same issue that was. all you could hear a rationale still relied upon put widely questioned you never closes a rescue. with all this is. particularly vicious he. has revealed here is. the engine of that machine both then and now a no fly zone code for aerial by. fueled in libya by the additional all necessary measures called for war where the line between the enemy in a foreign land and its civilians often gets blurred it did in yugoslavia with thousands of people killed and close to one million displaced after the war when they did a count they found the us nato bombs had destroyed fourteen tanks and serbia

fourteen tanks what they had also by four hundred thirty seven schools a similar scenario is now predicted in libya obama vows the anti could off the war will last days and not weeks that was the field clan in yugoslavia bombings lasted two and a half months to get a quick bit of bombing will sort the matter out but in fact i think they will find that it will last far longer than they have gambled for twelve years on serbia still remembers the losses inflicted by u.s. nato bombings the us is now involved in its fourth attack of a foreign nation in the same twelve years and states and turkana new york. so as we take a look back at history and compare our actions in libya to those in former yugoslavia we have to ask if we've learned anything now jake i just wonder to you is there really such a thing as a good humanitarian intervention right people look back because of and they say

that that's something that works but at the same time before we went in there before we started bombing maybe there were hundreds of deaths after we started bombing there were thousands of civilians that you know i actually think that the ghost of the war was a mismanaged war i think it was only a serial war and in terms of humanitarian interventions as we've seen over history that only three percent of the time within ten years of an intervention is an actual democratic change and more than likely there's there's a look as we always are from harvard studies and all sorts of other studies that there is less likely to actually bring peace and stability to areas so i think. think of practicality stance it's not good intervene it doesn't help the interest of the nation and secondly most importantly i think that wars only have any moral purpose if it's done out of defensive purposes and are a last resort they're not going to do that there's no point in my opinion robert what do you say is it really moral the humanitarian intervention if it's not your own conflict and if it might cause more damage than good at least in the short term

. and i think there are a lot of definitional problems and there are sort of want to get into. even going back under kosovo war. i guess one big problem i have with this particular intervention is that it's being sold as a humanitarian intervention but at the same time it appears that we some of the coalition partners are interested in regime change and they really want to get out so it's not going to protect civilians you know. and it's unclear and i'm not supposed to be the humanitarian mission for the war but it's unclear how the war until is supposed to be achieved humanitarian effect we're going to create a partition in libya or to throw it are you working do something else. that my biggest problem in terms are referring to this as a humanitarian by now i think we should honor to take everything with a grain of salt however they try to label it for us right we found out there are no w m d's in iraq you find out that there wasn't necessarily genocide there was a civil war going on in kosovo and here also you have to question yeah quick point

i mean there is a great lawyer within the american political tradition that neoconservatives bush cheney rumsfeld are really different from liberal interventionists like clinton susan rice and these others in fact they are the same there's only difference is that new conservatives don't like foreign institutions because they think foreign institutions don't advance american power and liberals say oh no events are power because we just use their institutions but they still want to intervene the only people in the american political debate that don't want to intervene are strict isolationists noninterventionist than those that are moderates who say that we don't gain anything from it but as far as liberals in new conservatives and foreign policy they're the same which is why poor. obama does not qualify in this regard but that's why i get so frustrated with this entire situation is because everybody paints is as if it's so black and white as if you're either for humanitarian intervention and for saving people and you know you have morals or you're not it's much much more complicated than that and i really you know i'm frustrated with this entire political rhetoric because on around. well i mean i think that there are you

know it is right. near conservatives come to the same conclusions on some questions but there is a there is a difference right if you're going to conduct he's going to intervention sometimes there's a reason why you might want more you want to institutions and sometimes and we may see to some extent weeks there are reasons why unilateral operation might make more sense but i said i think he's correct to say that there are wide swaths of agreement between these liberal interventionists on the one side and what we refer to in your conservatives army overshot ok now very quickly we have to wrap up but both of you so at the moment we don't know is the mission to bring gadhafi down is the mission to let him say stay no one really say it but what happens if a there is either more support for gadhafi in libya than we imagine or being he doesn't leave and then you know who we can excuse is going to be another guy like you we have in kosovo that happens to be selling organs you know this is this this is the real problem there because barack obama because he said publicly that he wants gadhafi to leave he must step down we are permanently entrenched in this we

may not be the sole leader in terms of intervening we could be a no fly zones like without iraq it could be a direct intervention could be a number of different things but what we see is that now we are permanently tied to this crisis this nonsense going on in libya i predict that cut off you will gain power he will not be pushed out of power because the whole civilians in the cities and he will stay there which means that we've got this we're going to be talking about libya for a long time because our examiner thank you both very much for joining robert i'm sorry we're out of time thank you both for joining us and i think you're right we are now permanently entrenched and stuck in a situation for which and reality you know it really asked if we want to be stuck and now it's time for a short break when we're out with the old and in with the new out with candidate obama expressed faith in our justice system to fight terrorism and with president obama's plan to withhold around the right from suspected terrorists for a longer period of time. wealthy british style it's not. was going. to.

market long enough to. find out what's really happening to the global economy is really the war on. last december the obama administration secretly created a new policy on miranda rights for terrorism suspects which they did not release the spy promising to be the most transparent administration ever now the wall street journal's got its hands on it and according to their report the new rules allow investigators to hold domestic terror suspects longer than others without

giving them a miranda warning now to move not only significantly expand the exceptions to miranda which were made in a supreme court decision in one thousand nine hundred four that allows the questioning of suspects for a limited time before the warning but only in cases where public safety was at issue and also the represents yet another major flip flop from the from candidate obama who criticized the bush administration for an ad hoc legal approach to fighting terrorism and said that we must fight terrorism with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process so where do the former constitutional law professors confidence in our legal system go well here to discuss it with me is ryan reilly reporter and blogger for talking points memo ryan thanks so much for being here tonight as well for starters i mean there are quite a few things you could point out here as to where obama flip flopped but they made this change in december and they made the secret and they were supposed to be the most transparent administration do you think they're too scared to stand behind their policies i don't know if that's quite right i mean this is something that was really it was. interview with charlie savage of the new york times every president

the first to get his hands on a copy i guess this week and it's really it seems to be more of a really a proxy to be not so much over miranda rights but this is really to gauge you know the debate over whether military or civilian system is the best way to handle terrorism but what do you make of the fact that the obama administration tried to get congress on board last year congress was not on board so they decided well you know we want to do it anyway so i'm just going to create my own administrative order here you know they didn't really seem to have too much access i mean that was something that eric holder first floated on meet the press but it really didn't seem to go anywhere i talked to senator leahy's office i guess last month it was and they said that they had not really heard from the administration proposals for how to change something it was dead in the water. but. you know this was just something that fix that was taken. back in back in december it was really started because you know i could name two suspects about the new york times square bomber

and the christmas day bomber who both were mirandized obama was really highly criticized for that by the republicans and obama defended that and said that we still got all the information that we needed to from these men and said that he believes in the miranda system so how quickly things change for even twenty also because you didn't hear the same thing as him during the bush administration when. it was the shoe bomber was put into this million court system that wasn't something that we really had much of a debate on and i mean miranda rights are pretty pretty widely known i mean anyone with watches an episode of law and order can figure out what they are exactly so it's not really so much of it to be about whether or not when we are i guess when we should tell our suspects about all of it it's more but that's what some of the debate is an aggression on republicans i think a lot of them don't think they should have to begin with so that's not really a by they i mean we're talking about terrorism suspects these are obviously people on u.s. soil and they're going to be mirandized so. it can either be a u.s.

citizen or a foreigner as long as they're caught here correct and it's also it's not a debate you also hear about some other nontraditional terrorism suspects the n.ok bomber. the i guess the man who tried to target and locate her in washington state i guess it was last month the month before you never really heard an update about when was he given his miranda rights it was just sort of a i mean that was i think that's where he was to call people like a terrorist let's just say that seems to be two separate categories for there's al qaeda and then there's another target i'm just wondering so i mean apparently the rules still apply whatever evidence that they may gain before they mirandized the suspect it will be inadmissible in court but then if it doesn't pose an immediate danger which is what these rules have done is expanded to something that does not pose an immediate danger then really what's the point here just so you can abuse the person or beat them up or you know how does it work i think that's what some people would like to do just you know take them off to a detainment center you know somewhere else and not really have this discussion but

for all purposes you're really only hurting yourself if you don't tell them about their miranda rights because you can't use evidence in a civil court so it really a lot of these suspects have been caught there's i think there's some feeling that there is and they know enough about it already that they don't need that additional confession and they just want an argument that they want to extrapolate information regarding the network and finding out more to sort of shut down these more worldwide these networks of cherished worldwide but it's not really so much of an issue we're going to some of the experts what do you think happened i mean i could name a very long list of issues including civil liberties issues here that he's flip flopped on like i mentioned he was a constitutional law professor he has so many times as spoken about our legal system our justice system how it's something that works that needs to be upheld i mean is there something did he ever really needed or is there something about you know assuming this role as the commander in chief is the president of the united states that you get these reports on your desk every day. and suddenly you know all

of your old principles fly out the window i think you know i think there is a little bit of the administration being worried about being seen perhaps as not taking a hard life position on terrorism issues they're already facing a ton of criticism over the handling of the blunder handling most would say about the. trial in new york city as well as a variety of other charism issues. you know the patriot act that seems to support the continuance of the bush administration but again already getting these criticisms from the right and i feel like they're just appeasing them every step of the way brian thank you so much for joining us tonight. now when we return will on bail our tool time winner for the evening he's just the latest in a series of republicans who suddenly oppose the war in libya after supporting it just days earlier and i wonder if this could have something to do with politics and then if you want to be president for get china europe or russia just head to israel or show you how television is becoming a crucial stop on the campaign trail for candidates.